On software development, quality, security and broken racecars

It had been a while since I last started a Flask-based project, so I decided to have a look at what’s. new in the current release. Earlier this year, Flask and several other Python web development projects were organized under the Pallets Projects open source community and governance model. Along with the move, Flask 0.11 was released with several improvements and new features.

So what’s new? Flask 0.11.x brings several JSON-related fixes and improvements, making it easier to build apps that primarily provide RESTful JSON APIs. In addition, you can now specify your app configuration in a JSON file rather than as a Python source file. I like this option better, especially when dealing with configuration that is generated by a build or deployment process or case where you need configuration to be shared by both Python and Javascript code.

One of the biggest changes in 0.11.x is the move to Click for command-line functionality. This eliminates the need for Flask-Script, an extension that was not being actively maintained. Fortunately, Miguel Grinberg‘s Flask-Migrate and other important Flask extensions now support Click as well.

It looks like the new organization is going to be a good thing for Flask and related projects. It’s good to see these projects getting they attention they deserve.